Interviews

Capcom's Seth Killian on Street Fighter IV

GameSpy: Is there a vocal contingent of the Street Fighter III crowd that still refuses to get into this, or to allow themselves to get into this?

Seth Killian: The most vocal contingent have turned into the biggest advocates for the game, which is, again, what really surprised me. I haven't seen -- and if anyone would see it, it would be me -- a lot of voices that are not interested in the game. There were a lot of people that were saying, "Well, I'm not really sure about this." But those are invariably the people that haven't played it yet. The people that have played it, you don't hear that from them anymore. Once they see their friends getting into it, getting mixed up in the tournament scene, and see the possibilities... It's really the other players that bring the game to life. This is part of what makes Street Fighter great, is it really evolves and sort blossoms as you see other people doing clever stuff. So I think [adopters from the Street Fighter III community] have turned some opinions around.

GameSpy: I imagine these people must be pretty articulate about what they like in Street Fighter IV. What is it that they're saying? What is it that they're into?

Seth Killian: I think the impression early on -- and maybe this was a failure in communication, or maybe it was trying to focus on a wider audience -- but I think some of them had the idea that this wasn't as serious of a Street Fighter game, that it didn't have some of the same kind of depth and magic of the old Street Fighters, that this was a "junior" Street Fighter or something. When they get their hands on it, they see that there's amazing amounts of depth and thought that's gone into the different kinds of systems. For instance, if you do a regular dragon punch, and someone is doing a focus attack while you're getting up, their focus attack can take that damage and it won't knock them down. But if you do the dragon punch as a reversal, that will break them out of the focus attack every time.

That's the kind of very specific thing that [tells] the players, "Man, somebody really thought about this." That's not something that would just happen if you were just slapping it together, "Oh, let's just throw some game together and put Ken and Ryu in it, and there's your Street Fighter." That's the kind of thing that obviously somebody had to really sit there and think about very carefully, like, and has thought through the different ways to use these techniques. [Street Fighter III players] are really reacting to that. One thing I've always said about the focus attack, early on, is what I like about it is that it's really easy to do. It's just two buttons, anytime you play the game, you can crank it out your first time. You can take it as far as you want to go. It's got a really nice learning curve.

My biggest problem with Street Fighter III is there's this insane learning curve. It was a great game, but it took you a long time before you were even playing it at a basic level. Street Fighter IV has a very good learning curve. It's fun to pick up and play right away even if you're a more casual player, but then if you are ready to take it to the next level, it's right there with you.